Saving the Planet and Expanding the Mind
My old neighbors in Washington Heights were marvels of resourcefulness, natural born recyclers inspired by thrift, as opposed to love of the environment. One of them regularly used to head down to the laundry room to polish off a load and come back with some rescued treasure.
From an informal dumping ground in the basement of a six-story elevator building, he and his partner salvaged dilapidated dining room chairs, at least one coffee table and a few lamps, eventually filling their apartment with these castoffs, on which they demonstrated, it must be said, an immodest love of decoupage.
Frequent entertainers and informal networkers, the couple did not just welcome their neighbors into their home, they welcomed other people’s homes into their home, linking one private space to another through things moving in time.
Green Metropolis, a recent book by David Owen, a writer for The New Yorker, makes the counterintuitive argument that the New York City lifestyle is about as environmentally friendly as they come, given that so many New Yorkers live car-free and packed into energy-conserving apartments.
But Mr. Owen overlooks the recycling that many of the city’s apartment-dwellers do via a basement laundry room or similar space. That is where many of our beloved vertical neighborhoods create a zero-waste zone, a trading post for things that their owners no longer love but think surely someone else should: all that barely nicked furniture, gadgets replaced by newer models, old pots and, maybe particularly in New York, an endless deluge of books.
At my former home in Washington Heights, I read the narrative of some unidentified young couple through the titles that accumulated in our makeshift laundry-room library: first “The Fertility Diet,” then several months later, “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” and finally a slew of baby-naming books. (Perhaps they were also the ones who, realistically enough, unloaded all their Let’s Go travel guides to various countries in Asia.)
One can imagine finding, in the basements of certain Park Avenue or TriBeCa buildings, a collection of jettisoned tomes that speak to a particular moment in history: “The Complete Guide to Buying Properties in France” followed by, perhaps, “The Credit Risks of Complex Derivatives.”
A glance through the laundry-room stacks provides a point of entry into lives that sometimes seem opaque, for all that proximity. It’s illuminating to know that someone else, someone very close by, shares a passion for Graham Greene or Star Trek or aspires to play blackjack like the pros.
At 169 East 69th Street, an understated but elegant co-op between Lexington and Third Avenues, the laundry-room library has been elevated to something approximating a formal sitting room. There are nine or so bookshelves double-stacked with books, and two bamboo chairs in orange, with cushions in a dusky peach plaid, have been arranged around a demilune table. Behind it hangs an oil painting of a bouquet of flowers. Across from the chairs is a wooden bench, rescued, most likely, from one of the terraces high above. Across from all of that, the hulking white washers and dryers do their drudgery.
Harriet Krausman, a resident of 16 years, has her own laundry machines upstairs in her apartment, but regularly traipses down to the basement to pick up mysteries or fiction. She usually returns them when she’s finished, and sometimes pauses to think for a few minutes on one of those comfortable chairs and contemplate her choice.
On Monday, Ms. Krausman and her husband, Gabriel, a retired appellate judge, sat in those chairs and asked Richard Block, a maintenance worker at the building with a tiny gold cross in his ear, which of the library’s books he had enjoyed lately. A biography of Moshe Dayan, Mr. Block said, and that book about Zimbabwe with the word crocodile in the title. (A little sleuthing on Amazon.com revealed that to be Peter Godwin’s memoir, “When A Crocodile Eats the Sun.”)
“I’m a history buff,” explained Mr. Block, who lives in Queens and has worked in the building for 21 years.
Francis Dosne, a retired Nestlé executive, said he had recently borrowed and returned Warren Buffett’s biography. Augusto Navarette, a doorman, opened the front-desk’s drawer to reveal what he had been browsing from downstairs: “The Leakeys: Uncovering the Origins of Mankind.”
Originally just a pile of books like those in so many other building basements, the library became a library about six years ago, when a superintendent put in some shelves.
Now the books just keep coming. They come from residents who cannot bear to throw them away, good books, and in good condition. It’s as if the building has a book club — the kind in which the members never actually had to talk about what they’d read.
“Now the only problem is where to put the next shelves,” said Mr. Krausman. “We’ll have to get rid of the laundry machines.” Or at least the dryers. Books are one thing, but clotheslines — that’s maybe even a better way to get to know your neighbors.
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